Page 981 of The romance and tragedy of pioneer life. A popular account of the heroes and adventurers who, by their valor and war-craft, beat back the savages from the borders of civilization and gave the American forests to the plow and the sickle ..

Results navigation

THE RED MAN OF TO-DA Y.
981
ligence. They live in a style superior to that of the white settlers by whom they are surrounded. They are dressed in fashionable clothing, and understand not merely the comforts but the luxuries of civilized life. Their sons are sent east to be educated in the leading colleges, and their daughters sometimes reveal the work of the young ladies' finishing school. A lady from Fort Scott, Kansas, told the writer of a public banquet and ball tendered by the citizens of the place to an excursion of leading Creeks from the territory. The visitors wore full dress, and danced with an ease and elegance which the young men of Fort Scott hardly rivaled. They were courteous and accomplished, polished in manners and easy in conversation. Their dark skin and black hair and eyes gave them the appearance of distinguished foreigners, an illusion materially assisted by their accent.
Next to these civilized Indians come the semi-civilized. Unlike the former, these have not arrived at their present condition through intercourse with the whites. The Pueblos of New Mexico have considerable knowledge of the mechanic arts. They built houses, constructed irrigating canals, dug cisterns, planted trees, raised crops of grain, vegetables, and fruits, made pottery, wove cloth and blankets, long before the white invaders began to trouble them. Next to the Pueblos rank the Nava-joes, followed at a still greater distance by certain bands of the Apaches, whose home is in the mountains. Indeed, we have already passed the line of semi-civilization, and find ourselves among the genuine "wild Indians," to whom belong four-fifths of all living red men. Some of these we have already met. There are the Ojibwas in the north, around Lake Superior, the Sioux, Arrapahoes, and Cheyennes, known generally as the " Plains Indians," the Comanches and Kiowas of Texas, and the Digger Indians of California and the western coast. The latter are the lowest of all the tribes. The name is given promiscuously to the Utes, Shoshones, and others, who live on snakes, lizards, grasshoppers, and such roots as they can " dig,"